Laundry treating appliances, such as clothes dryers, refreshers, and non-aqueous systems, may have a configuration based on a rotating drum that defines a treating chamber in which laundry items are placed for treating. The laundry treating appliance may have a controller that implements a number of pre-programmed cycles of operation having one or more operating parameters.
In some clothes dryers, one or more operating parameters may be set based on the temperature inside the treating chamber and/or the temperature of the exhaust air. This temperature is assumed to be the same as the temperature of the load of laundry; however, this is most often not the case, leading to poor performance of the clothes dryer.
In other clothes dryers, one or more operating parameters may be set based on the moisture content of the load of laundry. Sensors known as moisture strips are located in the treating chamber and detect the conductivity, and therefore the moisture, of the laundry during a cycle of operation. Moisture strips can be susceptible to electronic interference and other environmental conditions, such as differences in water characteristics. With steam- and chemistry-dispensing clothes dryers, the amount of steam or treating chemistry dispensed may be imperceptible by moisture strips. Any of these circumstances may cause the moisture strips to misread the moisture content of the load of laundry.
Several events can occur within a clothes dryer that prevents the drum from rotating. For example, a broken drive belt, a seized drive motor, an open thermal protector in the drive motor, or an object wedged between a baffle and a bulkhead can all prevent the drum from rotating. Typical clothes dryers do not have any way of determining if the drum is not rotating when it should be rotating, and may continue to supply heated air to the load of laundry after a failure. Without rotation, the load of laundry is unlikely to dry evenly.